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I am a straight male gamer and no I'm not being insensitive or trying to say "But look at me, I can function on it! So it must be fine"

The point is that public servers are horrible places. They might be more horrible for women or blacks or mexicans or british or gays, but they are in general horrible places for anyone who isn't the aggressor. For everyone that isn't in on the joke, they can be nasty and vile. And they shouldn't be. For anyone. But they are, for everyone.

While Sabrage manages to suggest women in roles such as booth babes should be banned from an event because of a way they make men act, then to say women get bad treatment on public servers just shows that men and their behaviours are the problem and not women. Should we ban women from public servers because if they use a mic, some 14 year old starts telling her how he wants to do things to her? No, that's bloody stupid, we can all agree. So why do we do the opposite when it's at a con? Why do people turn a blind eye to it and say "oh that woman, she's just encouraging that man".

I'm all for equality, I'm all for treating everyone the same, I'm aware other people have it worse than me and I can empathise with them as much as I can. But don't start saying I'm "insensitive" or "misunderstanding" of other people just because my views don't match with yours.

You turned out to be a lot more reasonable than I expected.

I agree that the proposed solution that you're combating, the banning of "booth babes" from cons and other gatherings, is not the way to go. I am of the belief that ensuring that the kind of behavior these women are dealing with is not just frowned upon but reviled and promptly corrected. And if people are just plain acted more mature at these functions then perhaps there would be less, or even no, booth babes at all in the first place.

I think that's a noble goal to have, to be in a situation where organizers don't say, "We need some hot chicks to dress in sexualized clothes to entertain our guests." Where they'd be more interested in getting more comic/video games/movie/whatever in place of where that sort of thing used to be.

I still don't get why this argument is based on the individual behaviours of the people already there.

It's vile and insulting to everyone involved that "companies" feel the need to do this. but why anyone would bother arguing about the individual motives of the models or horny fans involved is beyond me.

I still don't get why this argument is based on the individual behaviours of the people already there.

It's vile and insulting to everyone involved that "companies" feel the need to do this. but why anyone would bother arguing about the individual motives of the models or horny fans involved is beyond me.

These normally dressed women at the trade shows, who are being approached for pictures etc. What makes them so different from say CliffyB if he was to attend shows? People will ask him for a picture, in which the person will probably try shake his hand or throw their arm around his shoulder.

He likely gets far less of it. It wouldn't be much different to say Justin Bieber at a pop convention though...

I'm going to try this from a different direction, and this argument is going to be a bit reducto ad absurdem, but I'm not trying to say it's the same thing, just elucidate thinking a little.

Let's say the games publishers, instead of employing booth models, employed prostitutes (and the con was somewhere prostitution was legal). These prostitutes would take me into the booth and fellate them to a point just short of orgasm, before throwing them back out onto the con floor. Can you see how that would create a very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous atmosphere for women?

If so, you accept that sexually charged situations can be more dangerous for women. Now, we can argue degrees, we can argue if just having booth models in skimpy costumes pushes things far enough that way to be a concern. I think it does. I think it creates a sexually charged atmosphere that's not needed at a show about video games. You should at least be able to see the potential exists there?

Originally Posted by Winterstride

I think that's a noble goal to have, to be in a situation where organizers don't say, "We need some hot chicks to dress in sexualized clothes to entertain our guests."

See I don't have a noble goal. I want equality and respect for female attendees at conventions to be so heavily ingrained and accepted that we can have the booth models back as something nice to look at. But to get to that place, we're going to need to get rid of them for a while, because the muddy the waters.

Deano, if we're going to start making things up, can we we just go to extremes and say that all the men at the convention are also convicted rapists, who will immediately upon leaving the Ubisoft booth find the nearest women and proceed to drag her to a toilet and force himself on her? I'd expect that sort of argument from someone in the deep south of texas who tells a rape victim "Lady, you were asking for it dressed like that going in there".

But we don't have that, we have some girls who look pretty in nice clothing (which you say you'd like to see as a possibility) who might take a picture and wrap an arm around you while you give a thumbs up. That's hardly blow job territory. If a man gets that excited by such an event and then proceeds to walk out on the show floor and harass women, the man should be ejected and made an example of, to send a message that such behaviour isn't tolerated. Should professional cosplayers also be banned if they're seen to be too flirty with people? Because most of those chicks wear less than booth babes ever do and they'll be even more accommodating to punters because they want to progress their career and get as many pictures as possible out there.

Again, you're talking in terms of black and white.

I do see that the potential exists, that X amount of men might be excited by being in a picture with a pretty lady, but pretty ladies will excite men anyway and I really doubt to such a massive degree. Cosplayers will do it, girls in tight clothes will do it, girls in loose clothes will do it, girls in general will do it. Hell, some guy might get overly excited about the Dead of Alive 7 80" tv with the jiggly boobs.

What makes you think that taking booth babes away for say, ten, fifteen, twenty years will make anything better when/if they were reintroduced? Wouldn't that just take us back to square one? Why not just keep them around and start enforcing stricter policies on the convention goers? Again, it's not like these conventions are ever short of people wanting to go.

I'm glad to see though that we bought agree on equality for all attendess and having booth babes and sure why not some booth bro's to for the women/gay men folk.

"Halo is designed to make the player think "I look like that, I am macho sitting in my undies with my xbox""

I guess the simpler way of putting it is that if all the women in your game have massive boobs and wear tight tops and show cleavage, you're being sexist.

But just because one woman in your game happens to have big boobs doesn't automatically make her fan-service or less of a character.

I don't think any sensible person is asking that all women in media be flat-chested. But where design is concerned, especially as the industry stands right now, a large chest tends to mean a very certain thing. Unlike real women a concept artist has complete control over the bust of their characters. If you can think of a good design reason outside of variety for a woman to have massive, spine-shattering breasts then I'd like to hear it.

And variety is a good reason, by the way.

Lara's boobs were never 'comically big'. Plenty of women have boobs that size. The idea that one had to shrink Lara's boobs so she'd be taken seriously as a character is in itself horrendously sexist.

Well, now you just sound silly.

Lara's bust was so obviously the way it was in order to pander to hormones that reducing them certainly isn't a crime. The goal was to get us to take her seriously again and I think they did a fantastic job with her reboot in nearly every way (maybe way less wanton murder next time, though).

I don't think any sensible person is asking that all women in media be flat-chested. But where design is concerned, especially as the industry stands right now, a large chest tends to mean a very certain thing. Unlike real women a concept artist has complete control over the bust of their characters. If you can think of a good design reason outside of variety for a woman to have massive, spine-shattering breasts then I'd like to hear it.

And variety is a good reason, by the way.

The article that prompted this - big-boobed girl says big-boobed girls exist - reminded me of a very long thread back in Rift when folks were beginning to realize that the fey elven expies named Kelari only had B cups and were thus shocked - SHOCKED, I say - that a self-respecting games developer would have such FLATCHESTED BOYS be a whole third of the female characters.

Never mind that B is actually the average, never mind that the other characters started at C and went up from there, WE CANNOT HAVE THESE MOSQUITO BITES IN OUR FANTASY.

Now, the reason I mention it is because there were indeed a couple self-described "large-chested" women in that thread who were also demanding that all women should be depicted as large-chested, mainly because they themselves were. Well, whooptie fuckin' doo: For that, you have every other video game in existence for your perusal.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

I don't think any sensible person is asking that all women in media be flat-chested. But where design is concerned, especially as the industry stands right now, a large chest tends to mean a very certain thing.

The goal was to get us to take her seriously again and I think they did a fantastic job with her reboot in nearly every way (maybe way less wanton murder next time, though).

And part of the problem is that those values then get carried forward into real life. The idea that 'a large chest means a certain thing' and that women with large chests can't be taken seriously.

There's always the question of intent for sure, and yes Lara was designed that way for that reason, but you see why it's so awkward right?

It happened recently with Bioshock: Infinite. The artwork came out and Elizabeth had boobs. Everyone screamed it was just catering to testosterone-fueled gamers. Maybe they were right, but no-one even tried to figure out intent before declaring that they definitively were.